Third generation partnership project (3GPP) and Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobile telecommunication systems provide high data rate, lower latency and improved system performances. With the rapid development of “Internet of Things” (IOT) and other new user equipment (UE), the demand for supporting machine communications increases exponentially. To meet the demand of this exponential increase in communications, additional spectrum (i.e. radio frequency spectrum) is needed. The amount of licensed spectrum is limited. Therefore, communications providers need to look to unlicensed spectrum to meet the exponential increase in communication demand.
One suggested solution is to use a combination of licensed spectrum and unlicensed spectrum. This solution is referred to as “Licensed Assisted Access” or “LAA”. In such a solution, an established communication protocol such as Long Term Evolution(LTE)can be used over the licensed spectrum to provide a first communication link, and LTE can also be used over the unlicensed spectrum to provide a second communication link.
While this suggested solution is straightforward in theory, practical usage of such a solution while complying with various government regulations regarding the usage of unlicensed spectrum is not so straightforward. Moreover, maintaining reliable communication over a secondary unlicensed link requires improved techniques.
Improvements and enhancements are needed to deploy a compliant and reliable LAA network.